Stealing Sanity
by IronAmerica
Summary: It starts because he's bored, really. Then it's just fun.


So, just a silly little one-shot about a possible way Danny spent his time at Independence Hall.

Un-beta'ed.

- o – o -

Sanity Stealing

Danny doesn't actually start out with the intent to drive President Monroe up the wall. Not really, anyways. But he's bored. There are only so many books he can read and only so many different dishes he can sample in the kitchen before boredom sets in. He's used to Charlie waking him up at the crack of dawn and dragging him off on some wild adventure loosely disguised as a hunting trip. The lack of stimulation is boring him, and President Monroe keeps denying his requests to be allowed to walk around the city, saying that it's too dangerous.

The first thing he moves, out of pure spite after another denied visit to some of the city, is an antique silver watch. It has an elaborately tooled interior with a picture of some girl in pigtails in the inside. The watch turns up in the hands of one of Danny's guards. Danny feels a small twinge of guilt when the man is executed, although it passes quickly. (He does feel a bit guilty about stealing something that has the only picture of one of Monroe's sisters in it, though. That guilt takes a bit longer to fade.)

It's almost a week later when he gets the urge to move everything on Monroe's desk one inch to the left. After he's done moving things around, he pockets an antique pen and keeps a bland smile on his face as the president explains that he's still not allowed to leave Independence Hall. Concessions have been made to keep him here at all. The pen turns out to belong to Danny's uncle. Monroe screams for hours at the guards when he discovers that it's missing, and Danny has to bite the inside of his mouth so he doesn't smile. The pen winds up in a pawnshop, and the owner sells out the officer who brought it in to save his own neck.

Monroe grants him leave to wander around a local park a few days later, a tight smile on his face. Danny bites the inside of his mouth so he doesn't start laughing when Monroe twitches as he spots something out of place on his desk again. (Danny's only moved things on Monroe's desk twice, but never far enough for the man to know automatically what's happened.) He palms a few antique coins on his way out and leaves them in a vase down the hall while his guards are distracted. He returns to the hall at sunset to see Monroe in a foul mood. (No one ever finds the coins, even though they look everywhere they could have gone.)

His mother must know what he's doing, because on his next visit to her, Rachel casually suggests that he ask Monroe for a taste of whiskey. The look in her eye is the same one Charlie gets when she's planning a prank. It takes a bit longer to work out, but Danny manages to smuggle three bottles of whiskey from the back of Monroe's desk out.

Three weeks after Danny starts his campaign of tormenting Monroe, the president's personal physician makes an unusual middle of the day visit to Independence Hall. Danny hears gossip from some of the servants cleaning his room that the president is close to a nervous breakdown. He's executed more officers in the past few weeks than he has in the past few years. Whoever's been moving things or stealing them is succeeding in ratcheting his paranoia up to truly impressive levels. Danny takes a sip of his pilfered whiskey and begins choking on it. He decides that the whiskey will make its way to a deserving guard rotation instead.

His night guards are sent to a work camp three days later. Danny finds the shattered remnants of the bottles he stole below his window.

Over the course of the next week, more things go missing or are moved around Monroe's office. Danny takes a few more suggestions from his mother when he sees her, and the smirk on her face as he tells her the gossip he's heard is almost like having Charlie back. (Although Charlie would have set at least one thing on fire by now, just to keep Monroe on his toes.)

When Monroe has an actual breakdown in the middle of the day, screaming at everyone, Danny wonders if he's gone too far. He rolls one of the cigars he's taken between his fingers and sniffs in before tucking it back under his mattress, next to the box they'd been in when he stole them. He decides he hasn't. Monroe can just get more.

And then he's dragged out of Independence Hall in the middle of the night and taken to an old power station. It makes Danny almost sad when he realizes he won't be able to pilfer Monroe's things anymore.

Almost.

- o – o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Think Danny should have done more? Drop a line and let me know.


End file.
